In a move to become multidisciplinary, two central universities – Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Delhi University (DU) – started undergraduate engineering (BTech) courses. Both are otherwise known for their expertise in the general sciences, humanities and commerce. JNU has been running the course for nearly five years but students are still grappling with problems of infrastructure, labs and off late, even placements. DU, however, had engineering institutes under its ambit till 2018 when the last one became a university. Delhi College of Engineering became Delhi Technological University (DTU) in 2009 and Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology became Netaji Subhas University of Technology (NSUT) in 2018. The BTech courses DU started in 2023 were a separate experiment. During the first year, the primary struggle had been around filling seats; BTech in electrical engineering had only 13.2% of the total seats occupied. The central university’s School of Engineering (SoE) launched two engineering courses in 2018, unique five-year dual degree programmes combining a BTech in an engineering discipline with a master’s, MTech or MS, with specialisation in social science, humanities, science or technology. 

Source-IIT Madras